


The Bronze Age

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 23:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5763409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parahumans are just people with powers, and people die.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Crossover of sorts with "InFAMOUS: First Light".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Taylor (1)

Overhead, the sky burned with diffuse yellow light. Taylor couldn't see the stars if she tried. She didn't. Taylor weaved around the puddles, hugging the decayed brickwork of the factory building that stretched down this latest street, mindful for anyone else out and about in the Docks at this hour. 

She suddenly fortified herself with a sharp breath. The odor of wet garbage hung in the air, and on the exhale her breath misted. The skin on Taylor's legs itched. She gritted her teeth as she stole back a hand that started to massage a thigh. There was already one run too many in her cheap black stockings. Instead, Taylor tugged her military surplus jacket tighter. It seemed perverse. Rather than focus on patrolling, her thoughts ran to her poor costume choices. Even the dark pink wig didn't keep her ears warm. 

It had been bitterly nostalgic to shop outside her comfort zone. Emma would have taken Taylor's feeble makeover as a personal challenge to do one better, to help Taylor coordinate color palates and all the other things bundled together under the category of Not Being For Her, and would top off an exhaustive window shopping adventure by finally locating the cutest shirt that was hopelessly out of Taylor's price range. She'd be apologetic; the mismatches between their family situations always flustered Emma when it surfaced. 

It was childishness. Emma hadn't had a kind word for her a long time. Taylor tried to imagine them running into each other again. Would she be all smiles? Not that it'd be a good thing. She'd probably moved past being embarrassed by her dorky childhood friend. Everything that had happened since that summer was just water under the bridge. She'd expect Taylor to forget everyt—

"A-hem."

Her ears zeroed in on the polite interruption to her ruminations. Somebody was floating in the air. That somebody wore a costume like hers. No obvious mask. No bright colors. This somebody wore sneakers, a sleeveless jean jack, matching pants, a dark t-shirt, and a red skullcap. The part of Taylor that wasn't terrified envied the blonde's sensible hat. That wasn't all, admittedly. The cape had her arms crossed a generous chest. 

"Where's your boss?"

Taylor's mouth fell open. Nothing misted on the air.

"Yes, I'm flying, and I can put you across my knee and spank you without paying. So just point me towards your boss and I'll let you get back to work."

"Work? You — you think I'm a hooker?"

"Bzzzzz. Wrong answer."

The cape lowered herself to the cracked pavement, yet, while he tips of her sneakers pointed downward, she herself deigned to hover a handspan over the ground. Taylor started to take a half-step back, but then halted. "I am not a hooker!"

The cape made a production out of cocking her head to one side. "Sure you aren't."

Now that they stood face to face, Taylor overcame the gloominess of the ill-lit street and recognized the cape. It was Victoria Dallon. The Demon. That truth leeched whatever warmth lingered in Taylor's bones. Internet forums and old newspapers had told her this: she was strong. Taylor had watched a shaky cell phone video of the Demon casually hefting a garbage truck and tossing it into a crackhouse. She could fly. On top of both those things, she was strong. There were conflicting reports, but word had it that the Demon was invincible. The closest thing the world had left to an Alexandria. 

Taylor didn't know if all that was true. But the other girl had to be powerful. The Demon had gone toe-to-toe with teams of heroes and managed to stay out of jail. 

"So here's what's going to happen. You're going to either tell me where to find your pimp and his stash, or I'm going to break your fingers and then you're going to tell me everything."

So that's that. 

Taylor leaned to look around the Demon. No one in sight. No one behind her, either. When she turned back to face the blonde, Taylor found a look of satisfaction gracing the girl's pink lips. Yes. Here comes a spilled secret.

She should say something witty. Heroes did that.

Unfortunately, nothing came to mind.

"Well?" 

Taylor punched her square in the face. A veteran like the Demon had to have seen the blow coming, she would decide later. Amateurs always telegraphed moves. The Demon just expected her forcefield would protect her from an underage whore's sloppy right hook. She just didn't expect the sizzling pink neon packed in the punch. 

The Demon rocketed backwards, trailing eldritch energies even as she hit the blacktop and went tumbling like a child's toy. Taylor nibbled on her lower lip before remembering to run. She did so without legs, without any body at all. Rosy neon light illuminate the street. Taylor's other form reflected off puddles and dirty water-stained windows. It felt strange, to be so alive. 

The Demon had peeled herself off the ground and began to fly. 

A kick off the ground, a kick without feet, launched her on a collision course. Biological reality rushed back with a clenched fist leading the way—

—and the Demon's shoe preemptively planting itself in Taylor's gut.

Wind knocked out of her, Taylor simply fell fifteen feet straight down to the ground. 

The Demon buzzed overhead. "Aw, c'mon! Breaker bullshit too? Seriously!?"

Using one hand to cradle her stomach, which felt like it should have hurt, newfound durability or not, healing factor or not, Taylor pointed an fist at the blonde. Neon bursts streamed through the air. The Demon expertly weaved around the bursts, and all that was accomplished was expertly highlighting the villain's curled lip.

Once the street fell dark again, the Demon stilled. "Oh, I get it now. You're dressed like a tramp because you're in disguise. That's precious. Baby's first patrol."

Taylor ran.

Her body disassembled itself, and the pink miasma of swirling neon gas and stars flowed up the side of a nearby building. Hanging off a fire escape, grimy rain-slick railing clenched in one hand, Taylor stared back at the floating villain.

The Demon waited. 

"Go home," Taylor said finally.

Pain ghosted across the blonde's face. "You're not good at hero banter."

"Go home," she repeated, licking her cracked lips, feeling the idea come together as she spoke. "I'm faster than you, and someone will have called in my light show by now. So there's no point in you staying. Go break someone's fingers tomorrow night."

The Demon looked away, exhaled. "...I was patrolling here first."

Taylor still hadn't figured out what to say by the time the other girl shot into the starless night sky.


	2. PRT (1)

The door consisted of numerous interlocking brass and sliver hexagons. Dennis could tell the odd thing was, in fact, a door because the hexgons as a whole formed a tall rectangle. A moment of further observation led Dennis to reevaluate that first impression. It wasn't just a door. Specifically, the control panel off to its side, with Up and Down buttons, meant it was elevator door. The mystique of the thing was further dented by the "Out of Order" placard in front of it. Although at least they bothered to cordon the elevator off with a red velvet rope. 

Their PRT tour guide didn't highlight the inoperable elevator. Instead, while his mom made smalltalk, Dennis, hands stuffed in his Patriots hoodie, let his eyes drift around the lobby. That had been a mistake. He kept staring back at all the black and white posters, encased in their thick black frames, hanging over the building's lobby like a raincloud. 

How old had that gap-toothed girl been? Seven? Eight?

Dennis didn't know. An only child, he was terrible at guessing ages. 

The memorial portraits were starting to look a little sun-damaged. It seemed vaguely disrespectful not to replace them, like when you saw raggedy flags left to fly in wintertime. 

"—even listening?" his mom asked. 

"No."

She rolled her eyes. Over her shoulder, the tour guide stood inside the car, with one arm extended out to hold the doors open. Dennis and his mom walked inside. As they rode down, into the bowels of the building, the tour guide pulled a plastic baggie out of her suit jacket.

Dennis turned over the disposable mask in his hands. "Who's going to care?"

His mom snatched the baggie and pried it open. There were glue inserts on the inside. Like autumn leaves, their coverings fluttered to the elevator floor. Sullenly, Dennis applied the mask, and his mom, pique now exhausted, knelt down to pick up the scraps. Their tour guide kept both eyes forward towards the door, well-manicured hands flat against her sides.

They exited to a long chrome hallway. Something about it put Dennis to mind of something he'd read in his World History textbook about castles: murder-holes. He glanced at the walls, the ceiling, for clues to recessed machine guns or something cool like that. "Say someone broke in here to kill me, how'd you'd stop them?"

"This is the safest place in Brockton Bay," their guide replied.

"Yeah, yeah. But just suppose...?"

"Your security briefing will cover response scenarios."

"So you're saying automated guns aren't hidden in the walls?"

"I'd hope not. This is the way tourists used to come."

At the end of hallway was a terminal. They'd taken a retinal scan along with his fingerprints, so Dennis got to open the final security door himself. The reluctant smile on Dennis's face was met by a knowing one on his mom's. 

Inside, he found a Bond villain's lair as furnished by Radio Shack. 

The space was roughly dome-shaped. A row of monitors took up one wall, and plastered everywhere were schematics and technical diagrams. Almost every available surface was covered in unbuilt electronics and machine parts. Dennis couldn't put a name to a tenth of them. The air smelled faintly of ozone. In the far corner, thinly veiled by a clear plastic curtain, sat a row of showers, almost exactly like the kind Arcadia High's locker room had. Although the ones Dennis was used to didn't have half their floorspace taken up by someone's messy bed.

There was also an honest to God superhero.

Garbed in red and gold, with red-lensed welder googles on his head and a ray gun on his hip, the lanky tinker looked like something out of a movie. "Ma'am. Tick Tock."

"That's not gonna be my name," Dennis insisted, reflexively. Whoever heard of a hero that called themselves 'Tick'? Or worse, people would shorten it to 'Tock', and that was a stone's throw away from criminals and fourth graders on social media making dick joke puns. "I'll come up with something better."

Their tour guide put on Smile #37. "Why don't we let the boys get to know each other?"

Something evil gleamed in his mom's eyes.

Dennis steeled himself as she stood up on her tippy-toes and kissed his cheek, right in front of Kid Win. "Be good."

"I'm a hero. That's in the job description."

Once they were gone, Dennis ripped off his mask — and, it seemed, most of his eyebrows. 

"Fuck! Owwwww...."

Kid Win turned away, and put one hand up along his face like a horse-blinder. "Are you sure you want to do that? Usually people like to wait a little while."

"It's fine. We're teammates, right? And there's probably like a bajillion laws you'd break by ratting me out to the media." Dennis ceased rubbing his face. "Who waited?"

"Huh?"

"You said usually people like to wait."

"Oh. The other Wards."

Dennis would have raised an eyebrow at that, if he still had one. 

Kid Win said, simply, "They're all gone."

"I know. I saw the lobby."

"No. Those are the ones from before. When the sky turned red. These days, the big cities snap up all the new heroes. Like Circus." Dennis nodded. She'd been pretty hot in a sporty sort of way. He'd even gotten a pinup poster of her for his last birthday, but had been too embarrassed put it anywhere but rolled up inside his closet. "Or Aegis."

"Who?"

"He wasn't around for long, but he went toe-to-toe with the Demon. _Twice._ New York calls dibs on guys like him like that." Kid Win snapped his fingers. "Flight. Strength. Durability. The whole, uh, package."

"What about guys like you?"

The googles came off, revealing sunken eyes underlined by heavy bags. "Guys like me get put to work. All this legacy tinkertech doesn't do maintenance on itself. Not yet, anyway." Then he chuckled a little too much at his own joke.

Dennis got a sinking feeling, like when his dad sent him out of his hospital room so he could talk with the doctors alone. "Guess it'll be me doing the patrols alone, huh?"

"You won't have time for that."

"I'm not a tinker."

"You can do school visits. Flying the flag at the mall. Y'know, PR stuff? Frees up more time for me to tinker between tutoring sessions."

Dennis scratched the back of his head. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're on crack if you think I'm doing any of that bullshit."

"What we think doesn't really matter, Tick Tock."

"That's not gonna be my codename."

"Yes, it will. That's what they—" A hand fluttered toward the domed ceiling. "—do. Everybody gets something for signing on the dotted line, even if it's just lots of cash."

Dennis thought of his dad, bald and with limbs thin like matchsticks, and how his mom had taken to locking the cabinet where she kept the checkbook and bills. It hadn't been said out loud what him having powers meant, but he wasn't a fool. "Then what you'd get?" 

Kid Win replied, a touch dreamily, "I get to tinker all day long."


	3. New Wave (1)

First gravel, then wintery grass crunched under black heels. It was only sound for what seemed like miles around besides the idling engine of her dad's sedan. He had stayed behind, locking the doors as soon as she closed the passenger side behind her, as if that would keep either of—

Emma exhaled.

Her therapist wouldn't approve of indulging an old habit, but fuck him. 

One hand occupied by a bouquet of yellow roses, the other adjusted Emma's black shawl to cover a little more of her bare neckline. Her winter jacket was back in the car. It clashed with her outfit, and she wanted to look her best for Sophia. They didn't see each other much ever since the big move.

Despite offers, the Hess family wouldn't take money, settling for a simple plaque that scarcely rose above the grass rather than a full headstone. Emma could guess why. She had hopelessly stained the knees of her best tights in October, kneeling down to pull out the tall grass clumping around Sophia's marker.

It's hard to see what you don't expect, Emma knew. Her sociology teacher had showed them a video the other week of people passing a bunch of basketballs around, and the sheep that passed for her classmates didn't react when the guy in the purple gorilla suit walked across the screen. She and her father had made the same mistake, near fatally, in that oneway side street years ago. Which made it doubly unpleasant to miss the arrow sticking out of the hard ground until Emma was nearly atop it. 

She stopped. She stared. Finally, Emma knelt down, running a leather-gloved fingertip over the frayed bristles of the arrow's fetching. 

Not one of Sophia's. 

Something curdled in her breast, and the sentiment surprised a frowning Emma. _Of course_ Sophia had saved other people besides her. Still, none of them had known her like she had. 

"I hope for your—"

Emma spun around.

"—sake you aren't planning on stealing that." The newcomer was a girl her age. Gorgeous if a little weatherbeaten. Long blonde hair spilled out from under a red skullcap. 

Heart hammering against the inside of her ribcage, Emma replied, "N-no."

"Good."

They stared at one another.

Emma shifted her weight from one foot to another, grinding the brittle grass underfoot. "You don't look like you work here." Mowing the grounds, maybe, but not at this time of year.

"Well, obviously I live here."

_You're trying very hard, aren't you?_

Emma could sympathize. She could also deflate that sort of attitude with just a little work, which might work even better than flowers for memorializing Sophia, she didn't want a slap to the face — or worse. This was Brockton Bay, after all. There was a reason her family moved away, and it hadn't just been to be closer to Emma's hospital. 

"I'd like some time alone with my friend," Emma said. "If you don't mind."

"That girl was your friend?"

"My best friend, actually."

"Then what's her name? And no peeking."

"Sophia Anastasia Hess. Born November 5, 1995. Died—"

"I can guess," the blonde said flatly.

The inside of her bouquet was suddenly very interesting to Emma. "You leave the arrow?"

"Yeah."

"How'd you know her?"

"Didn't. Saw the date, worked out the rest."

"You just... saw the date."

The blonde turned to the side, breaking eye contact. "I said I lived here, didn't I?"

Emma looked over the rows of graves. It wasn't the Docks, but she supposed it wasn't a bad place for a homeless girl to squat. At least someone was looking out for the heroes. "The arrow was a nice thought. Thank you."

The other girl waved off the compliment, but didn't leave.

"I'm Emma."

"...Vicky."

Emma smiled. Her cheeks hurt a little from the effort. 

"What was Shadow Stalker like?"

"She was stronger than me," Emma admitted. "Had a strong sense of right and wrong. Swore up a storm when she upset." 

She was also unbalanced. And a bad influence. 

Yet Emma missed her terribly.

"Sounds like my sister," Vicky said, softly. "She was the same way."

"Sophia would've loved the way this city's gone," Emma admitted, drawing a skeptical appraisal from Vicky. "Gangbangers, crackheads, criminals, rapists... a whole bunch of shit-heads begging for the business end of a freshly nocked arrow, and who'd care if she shot 'em?"

The blonde muttered something.

"Pardon?"

"I said," Vicky began, "that it's like the bad old days all over again."

"Bad old days?"

"Something my — something I heard once. How the city used to be, when the Teeth and Marquis and all the other villains ruled the roost."

"I guess. Although without all the heroes and villains. Just people these days."

"Yeah. All the new capes have better places to be or things to do. Like run a fucking Boardwalk boutique or..." Vicky shook her head. She took a deep breath. "Although you'd be surprised. I hear there's a new hero out there. Looks like a living firework. Moves like one, too."

"Huh." 

"A real bruiser, maybe, but all doe-eyed."

"That won't last long," Emma said. 

"No," Vicky agreed, maybe. "Sorry for bothering you."

"It's not a—"

But the blonde was already trudging off, hands stuffed in her pockets, grass crunching loudly underneath each footstep. Emma couldn't put her finger on why, but something about the sound caused the small hairs on the back of her neck to prickle, and when she shivered it wasn't entirely from the cold.

Emma shook off the paranoia.

She set down her flowers atop the grave.

"Heya, vigilante."


End file.
